


a line in the sand

by doublejoint



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: KNBxNBA, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23693737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doublejoint/pseuds/doublejoint
Summary: Taiga’s never been patient enough to overthink too much.
Relationships: Himuro Tatsuya/Kagami Taiga
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	a line in the sand

**Author's Note:**

> for dw user novocaine_sea
> 
> prompt was  
> "I remember when you leaned in quick to kiss me,  
> and I swear,  
> not a single force on earth could stop the trembling of my hand."  
> ("Andria" - La Dispute)

It’s easy for Taiga to measure out his memories by summers, the summer his parents broke up and the summer he grew taller than Tatsuya and the first summer he was in Tokyo alone, the summer before his rookie season when he was in the Summer League, the first summer he’d gone so far in the playoffs that spring was far behind him when his season ended. They’re good dividing lines between the other seasons, the years his tans had faded more and less, the years he’d spent in one location or another, in one situation or another. Even now, when all of that is stable, the contract he’s locked into, the bedroom in his father’s house he still spends his summers in, each summer is a distortion of the last, twisted and turned and spun out its own way, like the tie-dye t-shirts he’d made one summer with Alex and Tatsuya and some of the neighborhood kids in the park. Taiga had used a polo shirt and his nanny had been worried sick about what his father would think, but his father had just shrugged it off. Taiga would be too big for it in another month or so anyway, but he’d kept it balled up in the bottom drawer of his dresser, the one he’d broken trying to pull it out too fast less than a year after they’d moved in and he has to wiggle to get it to come out at all. It’s still there, though he doesn’t keep enough stuff at his father’s place to fill up all the other drawers of the dresser.

Tatsuya rents a pre-furnished apartment for the two or three months he’s home and lives out of a suitcase. Taiga wonders sometimes if he challenges himself to need as few of the things he takes with him as possible, to have to barely repack anything. He never puts anything in the medicine cabinet, extra soap and toothpaste on the side of the sink, painkillers and band-aids out on the kitchen counter, as if he might have to leave at a moment’s notice and doesn’t want to forget anything. Alex says he’s afraid of settling down too quick, too much, but isn’t this his home? And couldn’t he just be at home with his parents if he was worried?

“Maybe I’m wrong,” Alex says. “I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

She pinches the bridge of her nose, right under her glasses. Taiga trusts her, and she’s always had a way of seeing the things about Tatsuya that Taiga hadn’t, that he’d had no idea to look for in the first place. (Maybe it’s her experience, her perspective, and Taiga’s lack thereof--only that would be way more true fifteen years ago than it is now.)

If he thinks about it longer, it’s easier to get, like the angle of Tatsuya’s living room window on the fifteenth floor, the same apartment he’s rented as the past two summers, this year with a new green leather recliner, maybe a new delineation or maybe just an inconsequential detail, like the ring on the desk in Taiga’s room where the finish is worn away from the glass of water he’d left there the summer he was ten or maybe eleven, part of the landscape for long enough. The window is on a corner, half looking out over the heart of the city and half looking toward the neighborhood where they grew up. The park is easy enough to point out, and Taiga’s stood at the window on nights he’s stayed late enough to crash on the couch and tried to figure out exactly where their favorite street court is, where their elementary school is, but geography and maps have never been his strong suit (though he’s better at not getting lost than Tatsuya is). 

And there it is, at the tip of Taiga’s fingers, right in front of his tongue, but he can’t get any further with it, just on the other side of the window glass like a fly perched right where Taiga could flick his finger and make it move. So he gets more water from the kitchen sink and drinks it there in the half-light, scrolls through the notifications on his phone until he’s out of the moment and the relative discomfort of being so close and not there is slightly abated and he can finally go to sleep. 

Tatsuya can keep his clothes in a suitcase and his groceries in bags on the table, packages in boxes, but he’s laying down roots here just the same. His hands intuit the stove light under the fume hood. He can fill a pot of water without looking at the faucet. There’s a chip on the side of the counter that the owners haven’t noticed that’s been there since the first summer, a scratch on the living room floor from when Tatsuya had tried to drag the coffee table away from its position. He takes the same route to the parking lot where he keeps his car, the same car he drives all the way back from New York every summer.

Taiga wants to go on one of those drives with him, always wants to ask but can never find the right time--really, can never stomach the thought of Tatsuya saying no, or saying yes because he can’t make himself say no. 

(And if they can see that court from the same room where they sit on opposite sides of the couch playing XBox, they can definitely see all the ugly things they still tread so carefully around, the things that will never leave them no matter how far up they rebuild each other, away from the time and the place and the feelings. They still seep into where they’re not meant to, sometimes.)

Alex is right; all of this is hard to explain, all the points on this timeline, no matter how neatly Taiga can categorize it in his mind--which is to say, not very, only some of it but not always the most important stuff. But this summer feels like it should be a line in the sand, like on a rare rainy day when the tourists are chased away from the beach and Taiga’s been carrying his flip-flops in his pockets and he takes one out and draws that line. It always makes Tatsuya laugh when he does that.

He shouldn’t be afraid to ask; they shouldn’t still be tiptoeing around each other like this. Or maybe he should know already, the exact words as to why Tatsuya is stuck somewhere in between (or pretending to, and losing the battle), what answer Tatsuya would give him and what answer he would want to be. There are a lot of shoulds, a lot of assumptions, and getting caught up in them does no good. Taiga’s never been patient enough to overthink too much, anyway.

When he kisses Tatsuya, the answers do not fall straight into his brain. Tatsuya’s knuckles are white against his thigh, his hand shaking until he clutches the hem of Taiga’s shirt, and even then still some, like he’s about to overthrow with questions of his own. Or, perhaps, answers first, answers soon.


End file.
